Hannibal marathon and social media event on the horizon

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Hannibal is easily one of the most messed up shows we’ve ever seen. We did wonder what a prequel to The Silence Of The Lambs would look like (prequels can be a bit rubbish), but nothing prepared us for just how nightmarish it was. For this series to not only appear on a mainstream US network (it appeared on Sky Living over here) but actually survive (although there were rumours it was going to be canned) is quite some feat. It didn’t do brilliantly in the ratings, but attracted a large cult following and it’s that cult following that allowed it to survive into a second series. Things are going to kick off Stateside in a few weeks with the arrival of series two (it’ll be back over here in the spring), and to mark the occasion NBC – the show’s home network – is celebrating in style.

The show tells the story of Hannibal Lecter when he was an eminent psychologist. Played by the superb Mads Mikkelsen, Lecter is everything the film version was and more. Helping out the police on serious murder cases, he forms an interesting relationship with an almost clairvoyant criminal profiler, Will Graham (British actor Hugh Dancy), who seriously suffers from his gift of being able to ‘look into’ crime scenes. Confronted by a series of ritualistic and brutal murders, his descent into madness is nudged along by the clever and manipulative Lecter, who has more than a passing interest in the crimes.

What we got during that first series was tons of incredibly vivid, ritualistic imagery, terrifying set pieces and a thick, claustrophobic feel. It was hugely flawed, too, but it was something truly original and quite astonishing at times.

In preparation for the second series, NBC has licensed the whole series to Amazon so ‘Fannibals’ (I know, groan) can re-watch in its entirety or new viewers can catch-up. Giacom goes onto to say that a social media ‘event’ on Twitter and Tumblr will encourage fans to interact with each other when the series becomes available on on the website. If you want to get involved, use the hash tag #13HourDevour on Sunday February 23rd. To be honest, we found that we could only watch one episode at a time – it was that heavy and disorientating – so to watch the whole series in one sitting gives us the shivers.